Pantherina

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

Image toolbox is awesome, damn!

2

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

What, source?

How would you block an OS?

And btw there are some reasons why GrapheneOS may be criticised

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

Mailbox.org missing, pass

6

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

I dont get why people would care for influencers

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

VPNs are not meant for privacy. The concept is clunky, as is the concept of our internet.

Tor or I2P are made for privacy, but the interactions with the clearnet have the same problems, you need a legal entity hosting the server, IPs are known and can be blocked etc.

Hosting your own VPN does not anonymize you anymore but is very unlikely to get blocked.

10

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

All Android phones have Google malware installed by default, as system apps, which means those apps can do whatever they want.

So every piece of data you put on there is possibly tracked and collected.

Then there are 2 more problems

the software is proprietary and cannot be externally wiped clean
the software is outdated

This makes it vulnerable to Pegasus attacks and others. There are tons of secure practices to avoid getting it, like LTE-only, HTTPS only, encrypted and trustworthy DNS, sandboxed processes, blocked javascript execution from unknown websites...

But still if the phone is outdated there are unpatched and publicly known security issues. Just spamming them at all phones is likely to succeed as so many people run vulnerable versions, as vendors suck.

Then if you have pegasus, the only way for security is to reflash the A/B partitions, both. Factory reset is not secure as it will keep what is already in the system partitions.

The firmware is protected and signed by the vendors, so it is likely clean.

But Pegasus installs itself to the phone storage.

If you A cant obtain factory images or B cant flash the phone at all, you cannot wipe it clean.

So a good activism phone needs

trustworthy and minimal system apps / stock software
modern software updates
possible to reflash whole device externally
nice to have: ability to verify checksum of system partition, like GrapheneOS Attestation

This makes them poorly pretty expensive. I think a slightly outdated GrapheneOS phone is okay though.

15

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

Burner phones are a strange concept. If you want to store sensitive data on it, you shouldnt use some cheap android phone or even a dumbphone without encryption support.

3

Pantherina @feddit.de 2y ago

Good that only you do this, as a whole company setup is complex
Pop_OS is currently not that well maintained afaik, their GNOME desktop is quite outdated.

Just using their OS for the hybrid graphics support is a valid point, but should not be the only one.

Having a well managed OS is crucial, but I disagree that Ubuntu base is the best here.

For stability, a centrally managed Fedora Atomic would be better I think. Way more stable, image-based, all peolple would have exactly what they need.

You could build images locally and take care of the exact updates like that. Or you just share specific configs for each role, like preinstalling different software.